Ever Integrating

I started this blog with the idea of exploring and learning how to create and live an integrated life.  I took the concept, loosely, from Carl Jung’s sense of integrating the various parts of the personality, envisioning a goal of “getting it all together!”

 

I have done plenty of integrating in my life, with positive results.  But I’m beginning to see the integrating as an ongoing process rather than a goal to be accomplished.  In fact, I am noticing that life, itself, is constant motion.  I am both part of this and aware of this at the same time. 

 

In order to manage such an amazing feat, we all create categories of entities, identities, and concepts of how they all relate in our experience.  Life becomes a cascading kaleidoscope of perceptions, shifting not only as the situation changes, but also as our beliefs about the situation change.

 

I admit, this is getting into rather abstract philosophy, but I find that when I come from this perspective (which is only occasionally, but meditation helps!), how I experience my life tends to be different.  I am less at the mercy of my reactions.

 

For example, now that I am taking care of my 91 year old father, I can easily slip into old patterns and responses.  When I find myself getting angry or frustrated or depressed, I can step out, just a little, to look at what is happening, how it mirrors the past, how the beliefs about myself and about him in relationship came from understandings I created long ago from the very limited perspective of the child.

 

This way,  I can see how his understanding and mine are based on interpretations of what is going on now and what was going on long ago.  Interpretations are not the reality.  Remembering this, I am free to explore and compare and find new interpretations.

 

Such is not to say I just make the anger go away in that moment.  But the greater my perspective becomes (which means what I think about who I am, who he is, and what our respective lives mean), the greater my sense of being grounded and sane in the present.  I can forgive him, and just as importantly, forgive myself.